The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), on Thursday, gave the green light for SpaceX’s Starlink to provide internet to vehicles in motion. This includes vehicles like an RV being driven across the country, commercial airplanes, a freighter moving from Europe to a US port, etc. Starlink currently has about 400,000 subscribers with its service costing users $110 a month.
However, FCC has put conditions on the in-motion Starlink service requiring it to accept interference from both current and future authorized services and all further investment in Starlink has to assume the risk that the operations might be subjected to additional conditions or requirements by FCC.
This ruling by FCC has not yet resolved the regulatory dispute between SpaceX and Dish Network and RS Access, an entity backed by billionaire Michael Dell, over the use of 12 gigahertz bandwidth. FCC is still analyzing whether the band can support both ground-based and space-based services.
SpaceX currently has 2700 satellites launched in the low earth orbit to support its Starlink internet.
